[Konoha Year 40 – The Conclusion of the Second Shinobi World War]
The year the world stopped bleeding was the same year the Hidden Sand Village realized it was hollow.
Inside Sunagakure, the atmosphere was a physical weight. The Maintenance Squad worked in shifts that never ended, the abrasive screech of metal and the ragged breathing of exhausted artisans echoing through the caverns. Damaged puppets were no longer just "broken"; they were piles of kindling and scrap metal, mangled by forces that defied traditional weaponry. The familiar scent of machine oil was now masked by the cloying, sweet stench of medicinal preservatives and the faint, copper smell of untreated infections from the triage wards.
Sayo, now four years old, stayed in his corner of the forge, a silent observer of a civilization in collapse. His father, Sharyu, was a ghost of a man—eyes sunken into dark hollows, his hands perpetually stained with grease and blood. He would return home only to collapse into a dreamless, heavy sleep, too drained to even speak. The village felt empty; every able-bodied shinobi was at the front, and even the young boys were being conscripted to pull supply wagons through the dunes.
Then, the final, desperate gamble was called.
The Third Kazekage, the "Strongest in History" and wielder of the Magnet Release, issued a total mobilization order. Facing a Konoha they could not break and a resource drain they could not sustain, he chose to lead the remaining forces himself in a final, all-out offensive. Elder Chiyo would command the vanguard of the Puppet Brigade.
When the army departed, Sharyu held Sayo on the high rock walls overlooking the village gates. Below them, a river of sand-colored flak jackets poured out into the desert. There were banners, but they were frayed; there was steel, but it clanged with a hollow sound. There were no cheers—only a tragic, suffocating determination. At the very front, the diminutive figure of Chiyo looked like a solitary stone standing against a coming flood.
"Father..." Sayo whispered, his small voice nearly lost in the wind. "Can we win?"
Sharyu didn't answer. He only tightened his grip on his son, his lips pressed into a bloodless line of powerlessness.
Fragments of the war trickled back like blood in the sand.
The fighting at the border of the Land of Fire was a meat grinder. Chiyo's poisons were legendary, stalling the Leaf's momentum, but the tide turned when Jiraiya of the Sannin abandoned the Rain front to reinforce the Land of Rivers. His arrival brought a stabilizing, indomitable presence that the Sand could not overcome.
Then, a specific piece of intelligence rippled through the logistics departments: Kato Dan, a high-ranking Konoha Jonin and the partner of the legendary medic Tsunade, had been struck by Chiyo's elite venom during a critical mission. Despite the Leaf's medical prowess, the poison was too complex. He died on the battlefield.
Rumors suggested his death had shattered the morale of Konoha's medical corps—and specifically Tsunade—but the tactical reality was different. Jiraiya took full command, his raw power and reliable strategic mind acting as a dam against the Third Kazekage's iron sand.
The war of attrition reached its breaking point. Every day, casualty lists were posted in the stone plazas of Suna, followed by the harrowing sound of mourning echoing through the dwellings. The Maintenance Squad received fewer and fewer puppets to repair, not because the fighting had stopped, but because the puppeteers were being buried in the mud of the Land of Rivers, their masterpieces left to rot on the battlefield.
Sunagakure was being bled white.
Konoha's losses were staggering—the White Fang and the Sannin were pushed to their absolute limits—but the Leaf had deep roots and fertile soil. The Sand had only grit and wind. Finally, the bleeding became unsustainable. The reports from the front changed from "Battle Results" to "Orders for Retreat."
The Second Shinobi World War ended in the total defeat of the Hidden Sand.
When the survivors dragged themselves back through the village gates, they were met with a deathly, hollow silence. The village was thinner, the faces of the returnees numb with trauma. The Third Kazekage remained imposing, but his brow was etched with a permanent gloom. Elder Chiyo looked as though she had aged a decade in a single month, her eyes vacant and staring at ghosts.
They had gained peace, but at the cost of their future. The Land of Wind faced humilating treaties, further budget cuts from a disappointed Daimyo, and the loss of an entire generation of shinobi.
Sharyu stood at the edge of the crowd, Sayo in his arms, watching the weeping families. Sayo absorbed the scene with a cold, analytical clarity. He recalled a fragment of memory from his past life—something about "Tsunade's Hemophobia"—but here, in the shadow of Suna's defeat, that felt like a trivial footnote.
He looked at the broken puppets and the broken people. He realized then that the "Shinobi System" was a flawed machine, designed to consume its own parts.
The war was over, but the road ahead for this scarred land was going to be even more brutal.
If I am to save this place, Sayo thought, his hand tightening on his father's shoulder, I cannot just be a ninja. I have to re-engineer the very foundation of how we survive.